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Held in Manchester, UK; organised through a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, the Universite Toulouse-Le Mirail, the Universite Montpellier-Paul Valery and elsewhere.

BACKGROUND We are pleased to announce our Fourteenth Manchester Phonology Meeting (14mfm). The mfm is the UK's annual phonology conference, with an international set of organisers; it is held in late May every year in Manchester. The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all corners of the world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a wide range of topics, including the phonological description of a wide variety of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.

SPECIAL SESSION There is no conference theme - abstracts can be submitted on anything, but, following the success of such sessions in previous years, a special themed session has been organised, entitled 'Fieldwork and phonological theory'. This will feature invited speakers and conclude in an open discussion session when contributions from the audience will be very welcome. Abstracts which attempt to deal overtly with the issues involved with this (from any perspective) are certainly welcome.

* There is no obligatory conference theme - abstracts can be submitted on anything. Abstracts should be sent to Patrick Honeybone as attachments to an email (patrick.honeyboneed.ac.uk) by 20th February 2006.

* Abstracts should be no longer than one side of A4, with 2.5cm or one inch margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing.

* Please send two copies of your abstract - one of these should be anonymous and one should include your name, affiliation and email address at the top of the page, directly below the title. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by members of the organising committee and advisory board.

* Full papers will last around 25 minutes with around 10 minutes for questions, and there will be a high-profile poster session lasting one and a half hours. Please indicate whether you would prefer to present your work as an oral paper or a poster, or whether you would be prepared to present it in either form.

* If you need technical equipment for your talk, please say so in the message accompanying your abstract and we will do our best to provide it, although this cannot be guaranteed.

* We aim to finalise the programme, and to contact abstract-senders by around 20th March. At present, there are no plans for publishing the general proceedings of the Meeting. We would like to keep the mfm as an informal forum where speakers can air new ideas which are still in the early stages of development.

**Further important details** concerning abstract submission are available on the conference website - please make sure that you consult these before submitting an abstract: www.englang.ed.ac.uk/mfm/14mfm.html

ORGANISERS

Organising Committee: The first named is the convenor and main organiser - if you would like to attend or if you have any queries about the conference, please feel free to get in touch with me (patrick.honeyboneed.ac.uk, or phone +44 (0)131 651 1838). - Patrick Honeybone (Edinburgh) - Ricardo Bermudez-Otero (Manchester) - Wiebke Brockhaus-Grand (Manchester) - Philip Carr (Montpellier-Paul Valery) - Jacques Durand (Toulouse-Le Mirail)

Despite many years of research, grammatical gender still is 'one of the most interesting and difficult of the grammatical categories' (as Corbett says in a recent publication). This two-day workshop is intended for linguists who share the interest and appreciate the difficulties in the phenomenon of grammatical gender.

We invite presentations on any subject in the field, but especially on one of the following topics: